Quotes from Peter Greenaway

For so many filmmakers, cinema is a means to an end.

I want to regard my public as infinitely intelligent, as understanding notions of the suspension of disbelief and as realising all the time that this is not a slice of life, this is openly a film.

Thanks to secondary education and the Internet, we're all knowledgeable now - if knowledge means the accumulation of facts. Curators are those who know how to maneuver around that knowledge.

I believe there's no such thing as history; there's only historians, and in English, we've got this word 'his'tory, but what about her story? So that, in the end, the history of the world would be a history of every single one of its members, but of course, you could never get to grips with that.

I have transmitted genetic material, all I have to do between my daughters' birth and my death is to decorate my life.

If Good approved of his creature's creation, He breathed the painted clay-model into life by signing His name.

It's a big criticism of Greenaway films that they are far too interested in formalism and not enough interested in notions of emotional content. It's a criticism I can fully understand from a public that has been brought up by Hollywood movies that demand intense emotional rapport.

English culture is highly literary-based.

I think that films or indeed any art work should be made in a way that they are infinitely viewable; so that you could go back to it time and time again, not necessarily immediately but over a space of time, and see new things in it, or new ways of looking at it.

I always think that art is one of the most wonderful exciting curious ways to learn. I have no worries or apologies about art being used as a teaching medium.

Religion is there to say, 'Hey, you don't have to worry - there's an afterlife.'

We live in a time of excess - excess population, excess information.

I am certain that there are two things in life which are dependable: the delights of the flesh and the delights of literature. I have had the good fortune to enjoy them both equally.

I believe that cinema died on the 31 September 1983 when the zapper, or the remote control, was introduced into the living rooms of the world.

If you knew when you were going to die, wouldn't you make your life more worthwhile?

All really worthwhile artists, creators, use the technology of their time, and anybody who doesn't becomes immediately a fossil.

As for critics, one mediocre writer is more valuable than ten good critics. They are like haughty, barren spinsters lodged in a maternity ward.

Anybody who writes a diary insists it must be read by someone else.

Most people are visually illiterate. Most people don't understand images: they don't understand how to interpret them or how to manufacture them.

Too many proofs spoil the truth.

I obviously irritate people. I obviously antagonise them.

I admit that death is not just about you, it's also about the people who love you.

I got in trouble with the stern-faced Russians who didn't want me to create a guy who is mortal.

I'm sorry - you know, culture is elitist. Culture has to be elitist: it's about seeing and knowing and about knowledge.